Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Diplomats, Dancer And Foods Highlight India For Visiting Scholar Lecture Series At Scranton

Panelists will discuss “India: Ancient. Culture. Democracy” at the fourth annual Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series of The University of Scranton’s Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library at 5:30 p.m. March 29 at the Moskovitz Theater of the DeNaples Center. Panelists are: Ambassador Riva Ganguly Das, Consul General of India; Dr. Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, deputy consul general of India to New York; and Jay Nathan, Ph.D. The event will also feature a classical Indian dance performance by Kadhambari Sridhar.

The University of Scranton will welcome three distinguished guests from India to participate in the fourth annual Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series on Wednesday, March 29, at 5:30 p.m. in the Moskovitz Theater of the DeNaples Center. Ambassador Riva Ganguly Das, consul general of India, and Dr. Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, deputy consul general of India, will join Dr. Nathan on a panel to discuss “India: Ancient. Culture. Democracy.” A classical Indian dance performance by Kadhambari Sridhar and a reception featuring traditional Indian food will immediately follow the panel discussion.

The event, which is free of charge and open to the public, is made possible through the generosity of Dr. Nathan, a former professor in Scranton’s Kania School of Management who is currently serving as a professor of management at St. John’s University in Queens.

Darla Germeroth, Ph.D., associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Scranton, will moderate the panel discussion.

A recipient of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Fellowship in India, as well as Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards to Thailand, Poland, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, Dr. Nathan recently joined the Board of Directors of the Fulbright Association. He also serves as editor of the Journal of Global Awareness and was past president of the Global Awareness Society International.

Ambassador Das was director of the U.N. Economic and Social Affairs Division, where she participated in environmental negotiations, particularly climate change. She was the deputy chief of mission with the Embassy of India in The Hague and served as consul general of India in Shanghai, China, from 2008 to 2012. Afterwards, she headed the Public Diplomacy Division and later the Latin America & Caribbean Division in the Ministry of External Affairs. Before becoming consul general of India in New York, she was ambassador of India to Romania, Albania and Moldova.

Dr. Mohapatra has served in a variety of positions with the Indian Foreign Service: as third secretary in the Embassy of India in Berlin; at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi as the desk officer for India’s bilateral relations with Bangladesh; and as the first secretary and counselor in the Indian diplomatic missions in Budapest, Hungary, and Dhaka, Banglasesh, where he was in charge of political and commercial relations between India and these countries.

Dr. Germeroth oversees the College of Arts and Sciences Academic Advising Center. Since joining the University in 1989, she has been a professor and chair of the Department of Communication and director of the Media and Information Technology program, and she has served on several committees and boards at the University.

Dancer Kadhambari Sridhar has studied with guru Malini Srinivasan, a classical Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, in New York City since 2008. She has performed as a member of Malini Srinivasan and Dancers and has toured with the company in the U.S. and abroad. She performed her Arangetram (debut solo) in New York City in early 2017 to mark a decade of learning and performing Bharatanatyam.

The Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series invites international scholars to visit The University of Scranton to address issues that will enlighten and benefit students, faculty and the community at large. While visiting the campus, scholars deliver presentations on topics of interest to the academic community and meet informally with attendees, students and faculty.

Reservations are suggested to attend the free event. To make a reservation or for additional information, contact Kym Fetsko at 570-941-7816 or kym.fetsko@scranton.edu.

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About Me

A Princeton PhD, was a US diplomat for over 20 years, mostly in Eastern Europe, and was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1997. For the Open World Leadership Center, he speaks with
its delegates from Europe/Eurasia on the topic, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United" (http://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2017/03/notes-and-references-for-discussion-e.html). Affiliated with Georgetown University (http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/jhb7/) for over ten years, he shares ideas with students about public diplomacy.
The papers of his deceased father -- poet and diplomat John L. Brown -- are stored at Georgetown University Special Collections at the Lauinger Library. They are manuscript materials valuable to scholars interested in post-WWII U.S.-European cultural relations.
This blog is dedicated to him, Dr. John L. Brown, a remarkable linguist/humanist who wrote in the Foreign Service Journal (1964) -- years before "soft power" was ever coined -- that "The CAO [Cultural Affairs Officer] soon comes to realize that his job is really a form of love-making and that making love is never really successful unless both partners are participating."